SUDAN:THE WORLD Food Programme is to halve food rations for up to three million people in Darfur from next month because of insecurity along the main supply routes.
At least 60 WFP lorries have been hijacked since December in Sudan's western province, where government forces and rebels have been at war for five years. The hijacks have drastically curtailed the delivery of food to warehouses ahead of the rainy season that lasts from May to September, when there is limited market access and crop stocks are depleted.
Instead of the normal ration of 500 grams of cereal a day, people in displaced persons' camps and conflict-affected villages will only get 225g from next month, the UN agency said yesterday. Rations of pulses and sugar will also be halved, giving people barely 60 per cent of their recommended minimum daily calorie intake.
The WFP said while Sudan's government provided security for convoys on the main supply routes, the escorts were too infrequent, given the huge demand for food at this time of year. "Attacks on the food pipeline are an attack on the most vulnerable people in Darfur," said Josette Sheeran, the agency's executive director.
"With up to three million people depending on us for their survival in the rainy season, keeping the programme's supply line open is a matter of life and death. We call on all parties to protect the access to food." Thirty-nine hijacked lorries and 26 drivers are still missing. More than 90 vehicles belonging to other aid agencies have also been hijacked this year, with some drivers forced to work for the combatants.
Humanitarian compounds are increasingly at risk. On a single night this month, robberies were reported at nine UN and aid agency compounds in El Fasher, the main town in north Darfur. Alun McDonald, a spokesman for Oxfam in Sudan, said yesterday the attacks and banditry were "critically affecting the entire humanitarian response" at a time when people were still being displaced from their homes by the fighting.
It had been hoped that the hybrid UN-African Union peacekeeping force in Darfur, which took over from the purely African force on January 1st, would help to improve the security situation. But only 9,600 of the 26,000 peacekeepers are in place, due to disagreements with the Khartoum government over the make-up and duties of the operation, coupled with UN bureaucratic delays.